Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
On October 7, 2023, Hamas killers slaughtered 1,200 people, more than two-thirds of them civilians, inside Israel. For the ensuing three weeks, they refused Israel’s demands to turn over the 251 hostages and to surrender the architects of the massacre. No matter—within a day of the attacks, when Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli troops on Israeli soil, the American Left was already screaming “genocide!”
They did not mean Hamas’s intended genocide of Jews, a foretaste of which was seen when it launched a surprise invasion force of more than 4,000 terrorists some 15 miles into Israel. The killers were accompanied by some 2,000 “innocent” Gazan “civilians.” All were bent on looting, murder, rape, torture, and hostage-taking of the defenseless.
Nor did the “genocide” chorus refer to the more than 13,000 rockets, missiles, and drones launched from Gaza after October 7 that predominantly targeted Israeli civilian neighborhoods.
What was most surreal about the charges of “genocide” against Israel—along with all the other slurs of “settler-colonialism,” “apartheid,” “occupation,” “war crimes”—was that they so often came from elite first- and second-generation Middle Eastern immigrants to America. Yet these prominent American accusers have remained silent about whether their lurid accusations might far better reflect the sordid histories of their own homelands.
Take the Turkish-American anchor baby Hasan Piker, the millionaire podcaster who has dual citizenship and grew up in Turkey. Piker has gained celebrity as the socialist heartthrob who is the brain of the new Democratic/Socialist/Islamist alliance. Besides his antisemitic rants, he has declared that “America deserved 9/11” and “Oh God, I f-cking hate America so much.”
Yet the outspoken Piker has only once in passing mentioned Turkey’s 1974 invasion and the half-century-long occupation of nearly 40 percent of Cyprus.
Nor did Piker, who damns the creation of Israel in 1948, ever say a word about the Turkish torching of the historic Greek-majority Ionian city of Smyrna in 1922, in which tens of thousands of civilians were incinerated.
Given Piker’s supposedly vast historical recall and outspoken human rights advocacy, one would at least expect him to be sensitive to the horror of Turkey’s Armenian genocide, in which Turkish troops slaughtered more than one million civilians, and for which the Turkish government still denies any culpability. But when once challenged by Armenian-Americans, he dismissed them, saying flippantly, “It’s more fun to enrage you.”
And the pattern goes beyond mere podcasters.
Representative Ilhan Omar, a first-generation immigrant from Somalia, also brays loudly about supposed Israeli war crimes. Omar spouts “genocide” and “apartheid” in her frequently antisemitic rants. She has also labeled her adopted nation as “one of the worst countries” in the world.
But Omar is the daughter of a well-known colonel in the truly genocidal army of Somali dictator Siad Barre. The latter waged a decade-long war of extermination against the rival Isaaq clan that opposed Barre’s 21-year-long dictatorship. Estimates of the Barre regime’s murderous toll range from 50,000 to 200,000 killed, mostly civilians. Few in Omar’s politically active Somali immigrant community ever concede that many fled Somalia to America only when Barre’s two-decade reign of terror was finally overthrown, and they feared retaliation from his victims.
Of course, the nation’s biggest elected leftist rising star has also joined in.
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, employs the same tired anti-Israeli and anti-American verbiage. Yet he went further than other anti-Semites when he launched grandstanding threats to jail Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any time the latter visited New York to address the United Nations.
For America’s 250th birthday, Mamdani’s July 3 “commemorative” address blasted American “monopolies that dominate every industry,” federal agents supposedly “terrorizing our streets,” and a country where we “sell our elections to the highest bidder.” The calumny was odd coming from a dual citizen of the police state of Uganda, where there are no real elections but lots of Indian “monopolies.”
Indeed, Mamdani himself better fits his own charges of “settler-colonist” and “apartheid.” His Indian community in Uganda comprises less than 0.1 percent of the population. But somehow it still accounts for over 60 percent of Uganda’s GDP. It was implanted there by 19th-century British imperialists as a “settler-colonial” community to help control the indigenous black population.
In short, we should remind these privileged ingrates—regardless of what corner of the world they hail from—to look inward before they blast their adopted country and not to project the sins of their own homelands upon either Israel or America.
Discussion (7)
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All I have to say this time Victor is BRAVO and WELL SAID! Keep up the good work and congratulations on the book sales. Sorry, as a retired old fart at 72, I have to wait until it goes on sale with Thrift Books. Stay healthy and keep praying that these left-wing, pseudo-intellectual lemming hypocrites do not walk the halls of Congress or the White House.
It is truly hard to be sympathetic to the offspring of the arab colonizers of Israel when the most famous "Palestinian-American" is Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of every liberal woman's idealist hearthrob, Bobby Kennedy. The Turks have been aggressive colonizers since they first came on the scene. Visit basilica at Otranto, Italy to understand the terror they have caused. They have the most poignant altarpiece to true Martyrdom. Yet we allow Erdogan to furnish $115,000,000 to fund the Diyanet Center in Lanham, MD, 15 miles from Washington, D.C. in 2016. It is time to enact exile processing against Piker and his buddies (especially wahabist imams who openly , in ENGLISH, ON VIDEO, give sermons each week in the US proposing their goals of literal CONQUEST of America) to rid our country of these invaders and sleeper agents. It is also time to push back against the keffiyeh-sportin nosering crowd of self-important pencil-necked Red-Green poseurs who don't know anything about history. Still most Americans who are in a position to fight back are cowed like the Labour coucilors and police officers of Yorkshire who were too afraid of being called a "Raaaaaaycist" for stepping up to the Pakistani industrial-sized rape gangs of vulnerable English girls.
It is truly hard to be sympathetic to the offspring of the arab colonizers of Israel when the most famous "Palestinian-American" is Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of every liberal woman's idealist hearthrob, Bobby Kennedy. The Turks have been aggressive colonizers since they first came on the scene. Visit basilica at Otranto, Italy to understand the terror they have caused. They have the most poignant altarpiece to true Martyrdom. Yet we allow Erdogan to furnish $115,000,000 to fund the Diyanet Center in Lanham, MD, 15 miles from Washington, D.C. in 2016. It is time to enact exile processing against Piker and his buddies (especially wahabist imams who openly , in ENGLISH, ON VIDEO, give sermons each week in the US proposing their goals of literal CONQUEST of America) to rid our country of these invaders and sleeper agents. It is also time to push back against the keffiyeh-sportin nosering crowd of self-important pencil-necked Red-Green poseurs who don't know anything about history. Still most Americans who are in a position to fight back are cowed like the Labour coucilors and police officers of Yorkshire who were too afraid of being called a "Raaaaaaycist" for stepping up to the Pakistani industrial-sized rape gangs of vulnerable English girls.
Good write up!
Victor - THANKFUL for your recovery and your return to prolific & powerful commentary - America needs your voice of truth God bless
Thank you for another excellent article, Victor! My wife and I have been so disheartened by the disgusting amount of antisemitism that has been growing in the country, especially among the young people. It is refreshing to hear your perspectives, which are always supported by facts. Thank you! ..... Rich
"within a day of the attacks, when Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli troops on Israeli soil, the American Left was already screaming “genocide!” Dr. Hanson: do you not see a problem with your choosing to use the term "Hamas gunmen" to describe these hajjis? Rather than what I will state and believe is far more accurate: 'Islamist terrorists'? Or if you prefer 'Salafist/Wahaabist terrorists'; or as another alternative 'Muslim Caliphate terrorists'? After all, we don't even need the official designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization to know that's exactly what they are - an organization whose every member is a terrorist sworn to the genocide of the world's Jews and eliminating Israel. Words matter Dr. Hanson, as does the choice of words. 'Gunmen' is the kind of choice I would make to describe terrorists if I were an editor at the Washington Post, sympathetic to the "Palestinian" resistance movement fighting against what they call Israeli apartheid and genocide of the noble ancient civilization and state of "Palestine" inside of Gaza. It gives them somewhat of a whitewash as to what they're doing, versus the stark fact that they are nothing more than cowardly bloody butchers. Remember that line from George Orwell's book '1984', where the government agent brainwashing Winston tells him "The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect"? When our psy ops unit was deployed to Afghanistan, we shaped our words to get the desired effect on our Afghan audiences. You can inadvertently give these terrorist butchers some semblance of cover with your choice of words like "gunmen", rather than 'terrorists'.